Learning Goals:

  1. Present arguments for why naturalization might foster or hinder immigrants’ social integration.
  2. Explain the basic idea behind a regression discontinuity design
  3. Practice testing for implications of arguments when direct tests are not possible
  4. Practice thinking through the generalizability of research findings to “out of sample” populations

Arguments

Quickly write down:

  1. Through which mechanisms might naturalization foster social integration?
  2. And why might granting naturalization too easily hinder social integration?

Double Selection

  1. What’s wrong with simply comparing naturalized vs. unnaturalized immigrants?

  1. How do Hainmüller et al. get around the first selection problem?
  2. And the second?

Voting on your fellow citizens

Leaflet




But of course, people who win their referendums are still different from people who lose them:
Who Gets a Swiss Passport?


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So how does the research design help us to ensure that we are comparing apples to apples?

Selection on Observables Strategy


In the first strategy we utilize the fact that we can measure and control for all the applicant characteristics that were reported to voters in the voting leaflets when they decided on the applicants and therefore rule out omitted variable bias. In contrast to the situation where an immigration official decides on the applicants based on information that is unobserved to the researcher, here we do observe all the relevant applicant characteristics that were reported to voters who decided on each request. Once we adjust for the reported characteristics and compare applicants who applied in the same municipality, in the same time period, have the same gender, country of origin, marital status, number of children, education, occupational skill, years of residency, assessed integration level, and language proficiency, such matched applicants are observably equivalent to voters, and therefore voters cannot systematically discriminate between applicants based on their unobserved characteristics. Therefore, among such observably equivalent applicants who are matched on the characteristics that voters see on the leaflets, who wins and who loses is not driven by systematic differences in the integration potential of the individual immigrants, but by idiosyncratic shocks that affect the aggregate vote outcomes such as what else appeared on the ballot or the weather on the day of the referendum.

  1. What does that mean?
  2. How is this different than simply using controls in an observational study?

RD Design

Again, the goal here is to create similar treatment and control groups.

But rather than relying on statistical controls, we rely on the assumption that people who barely lost their referendum are, on average, the same as people who barely won.

Of course, still need to check whether this assumption holds:

Covariate Balance


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RD Result


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You try it:


It is very commonly found in surveys that people with a university education are more tolerant of diversity and have more pro-immigrant attitudes.

One hypothesis for this relationship is that attending university causes people to become more tolerant.

  1. Explain why a simple comparison of people with vs. without university education might be biased.
  2. How might you better test this hypothesis?
    • Hint: consider that in some countries, the only way to attend university is to sit for – and pass – a national entrance examination.

Main Results


How should we interpret this result?

  1. Winners increase integration efforts: citizenship provides naturalized immigrants with the identity, incentives, recognition, and resources to increase their long-term social integration
  2. Losers decrease integration efforts: applicants who are denied became more alienated from Swiss society than they would have become had they never applied for naturalization in the first place.

Testing Implications

Note that we cannot directly test the alienation mechanism: that is, we should not compare people who lost their referendum against people who never applied for citizenship in the first place (even controlling for observable differences).

(BTW, can you explain why not?)

Instead, we can make progress by reasoning by implication: considering outcomes that would only be predicted by one mechanism, but not the other.

An Example You Already Know: Statistical vs. Taste-based Discrimination


Imagine we conduct a correspondence study on housing discrimination.

Suppose that:

  • landlords are only concerned about tenants’ ability to pay the rent.
  • minority renters really are, on average, poorer than majority renters.

We run an experiment where we send a short email to landlords with the signature:

  1. Michael Fischer
  2. Mohammed el-Fatih
  3. Prof. Dr. Michael Fischer
  4. Prof. Dr. Mohammed el-Fatih

An implication of statistical (but not taste-based) discrimination is that discrimination would disappear (or diminish) when signing with “Prof. Dr.”

An implication of taste-based (but not statistical) discrimination is that signing with “Prof. Dr.” should have no effect on discrimination rates.

You try it



American university students commonly have the experience that the football players in their classes say really dumb things.

Of course, the standard explanation for this is that football players weren’t selected to attend university based on their academic merit, but rather on their athletic skills (and ability to generate $ for the school). In other words, football players say dumb things in class because they are dumb.

But other explanations are also possible:

  1. Limited Time: There is limited time in a day, so when a person engages in a very time-consuming activity (such as playing semi-professional sports), it takes time away from other very time-consuming activities such as studying. Given limited study time, football players are less prepared academically, and therefore are more apt to say dumb things.
  2. Jealosy: We are jealous of others’ success. When we are jealous, we subconsciously lower our evaluation of that person’s performance in other areas. So we think football players say dumb things in class (when really, they do not).

Your task:

Can you come up with any observable implications of these theories that would allow you to distinguish them from the standard explanation (and from each other)?
In other words, can you think of outcomes that would only “fit” one theory, but not the others?

Implications of Alienation


If applicants become alienated because their applications have been denied, then we expect:

  1. they would develop a higher level of distrust of the local authorities who handled the applications and did not avert the potentially discriminatory rejections.
  2. they would develop a higher level of distrust of the judicial system more broadly because the courts did not overturn a discriminatory rejection upon appeal.
  3. them to grow more distrustful of other people in their community given that a majority voted against their application.

“Out of sample” inferences

Hainmüller et al have answered a scientific question: naturalization fosters immigrants’ social integration (within the Swiss context).

But suppose you are a politician. You have the following policy question: can we improve social integration by making naturalization easier (e.g. by lowering residency, language and employment requirements)?

An ideal experiment: * another country similar to CH (same immigrant groups, same level of xenophobia, etc.) * same referendum system in place, during the same time period * but easier to get on the ballot

We then replicate the experiment in country X and compare the effects of naturalization there vs. in CH.

Of course, country X doesn’t exist! We are asked to make an inference about what would happen to an “out-of-sample” population.

Think about two groups:

  1. How does the “treatment” likely work? (Look back to what you listed at the beginning of class)
  2. Are these effects likely to be weaker or stronger for people in Group B relative to people in Group A?

Answering these questions should help you to reason “out-of-sample” and offer some (principled) advice to the politician.